Psychology
psychology (psychologie) In his pre-1950 writings, Lacan sees psychoanalysis and psychology as parallel disciplines which can cross-fertilise each other. Although he is very critical of the conceptual inadequacies of associationist psychology, Lacan argues that psychoanalysis can help to build an 'authentic psychology' free from such errors by providing it with truly scientific concepts such as the IMAGo and the COMPLEx (Lacan, 1936).
makes of such comparisons, it is clear that Lacan's discussions of Psychosis
are among the most significant and original aspects of his work.
Lacan's most detailed discussion of Psychosis appears in his seminar of
1955-6, entitled simply The Pychoses. It is here that he expounds what come
to be the main tenets of the Lacanian approach tO MADNESs. Psychosis is defined
as one of the three clinical StructureS, one of which is defmed by the operation
of FORECLOSURE. In this operation, the NAME-OF-THE-FATHER is not integrated in
the Symbolic universe of the psychotic (it is 'foreclosed'), with the result that a
hole is left in the Symbolic order. To speak of a hole in the Symbolic order is
not to say that the psychotic does not have an unconscious: on the contrary, in
Psychosis 'the unconscious is present but not functioning' (S3, 208). The
psychotic structure thus results from a certain malfunction of the Oedipus
complex, a lack in the paternal function; more specifically, in Psychosis the
paternal function is reduced to the image of the father (the Symbolic is reduced
to the Imaginary).
In Lacanian psychoanalysis it is important to distinguish between Psychosis,
which is a clinical structure, and psychotic phenomena such aS DELUSIONS and
HALLUCINATIONS. Two conditions are required for psychotic phenomena to
emerge: the subject must have a psychotic structure, and the Name-of-the-
Father must be 'called into Symbolic opposition to the subject' (E, 217). In the
absence of the first condition, no confrontation with the paternal signifier will
ever lead to psychotic phenomena; a neurotic can never 'become psychotic'
(see S3, 15). In the absence of the second condition, the psychotic structure
will remain latent. It is thus conceivable that a subject may have a psychotic
structure and yet never develop Delusions or experience hallucinations. When
both conditions are fulfilled, the Psychosis is 'triggered off', the latent
Psychosis becomes manifest in hallucinations and/or Delusions.
Lacan bases his arguments on a detailed reading of the Schreber case (Freud,
1911c). Daniel Paul Schreber was an Appeal Court judge in Dresden who
wrote an account of his paranoid Delusions; an analysis of these writings
constitutes Freud's most important contribution to the study of Psychosis.
Lacan argues that Schreber's Psychosis was triggered off by both his failure
to produce a child and his election to an important position in the judiciary;
both of these experiences confronted him with the question of paternity in the
Real, and thus called the Name-of-the-Father into Symbolic opposition with the
subject.
In the 1970s Lacan reformulates his approach to Psychosis around the notion
of the BORROMEAN KNOT. The three rings in the knot represent the three orders:
the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary. While in neurosis these three rings
are linked together in a particular way, in Psychosis they become disentangled.
This psychotic dissociation may sometimes however be avoided by a sympto-
matic formation which acts as a fourth ring holding the other three together
(see SINTHOME).
Lacan follows Freud in arguing that while Psychosis is of great interest for
However, from 1950 on, there is a gradual but constant tendency to
dissociate psychoanalysis from psychology. Lacan begins by arguing that
psychology is confined to an understanding of animal psychology (ethol-
ogy): 'The psychological is, if we try to grasp it as firmly as possible, the
ethological, that is the whole of the biological individual's behaviour in
relation to his natural environment' (S3, 7). This is not to say that it cannot
say anything about human beings, for humans are also animals, but that it
cannot say anything about that which is uniquely human (although at one point
Lacan does state that the theory of the ego and of narcissism 'extend' modern
ethological research; Ec, 472). Thus psychology is reduced to general laws of
behaviour which apply to all animals, including human beings; Lacan rejects
'the doctrine of a discontinuity between animal psychology and human
psychology which is far away from our thought' (Ec, 484). However, Lacan
vigorously rejects the behaviourist theory according to which the same general
laws of behaviour are sufficient to explain all human psychic phenomena. Only
psychoanalysis, which uncovers the linguistic basis of human subjectivity, is
adequate to explain those psychic phenomena which are specifically human.
In the 1960s the distance between psychoanalysis and psychology is empha-
sised further in Lacan's work. Lacan argues that psychology is essentially a
tool of 'technocratic exploitation' (Ec, 851; see Ec, 832), and that it is
dominated by the illusions of wholeness and synthesiS, NATURE and instinct,
autonomy and self-consciousness (Ec, 832). Psychoanalysis, on the other hand,
subverts these illusions cherished by psychology, and in this sense 'the
Freudian enunciation has nothing to do with psychology' (Sl7, 144). For
example the most cherished illusion of psychology is 'the unity of the
subject' (E, 294), and psychoanalysis subverts this notion by demonstrating
that the subject is irremediably split or 'barred'.